In a July 3 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein claimed that NBC's Lester Holt was "obfuscating an important fact" when he suggested that the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame outing investigation, who obtained a conviction against Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice, "never really got to the root of this case." Finkelstein responded: "The prosecutor never got to the root of the case? Sure he did. He knew all along that the leaker wasn't Libby, but Richard Armitage over at the State Department," further insisting that "the fundamental reason that Libby wasn't charged with leaking was that he was not the leaker."

In fact, Libby did leak Valerie Plame's name to at least two reporters. Finkelstein is making the absurd argument that because Armitage leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak, and Novak was the first to report it ahead of the reporters to whom Libby leaked, that Libby's leak somehow magically didn't happen.